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DEAR ELIS: I have a client whose website provides a large variety of Alaskan travel tours. Since a good portion of successful marketing can be attributed to timing, what do you think of the idea of my client developing volcano tours of Mount Redoubt, AK? Not while it is actually erupting of course! Your thoughts are anticipated. ~~A search marketer in doubt.
Mt Redoubt: Take A Picture, It'll Last Longer -Flickr/creative commons, img by Uri Breitman
DEAR NO DOUBT:Certainly you are right about one thing in this case - it’s all about timing. With volcanic experts predicting the imminent eruption of the breathtaking spot (pictured), it may be too late to add it to 1,000 Things to See Before You Die book. Never fear, it sounds like your client is hoping to help the mountain make its own Bucket List, in a last attempt to affect as many lives as possible and see something majestic.
That’s the title of my latest SEW article on Travel search marketing - which starts to explore some of the ideas mentioned in my last post about the Travel session at the upcoming SES NYC. The session will probably focus on smart marketing strategies in a tough economy, and there will likely be a lot of people looking to up their traffic numbers via organic SEO and social media this year- given that both are relatively low-cost.
What I really want to know is - do you think 2009 is going to be the year of change in travel SEM? Are there going to be any ground breaking changes, creative campaigns that generate real ROI, or new players in the game?
Or will it be about searching the couch cushions for change in order to create your marketing budget? [click to continue…]
At this year’s Search Engine Strategies: New York, there’s going to be a special vertical track - with a different approach from previous ‘vertical search’ sessions held in the past. I am currently putting together the panel for this session:
Four Paths to Success in a Tough Travel Economy
Travel marketers discuss the challenges of smart search marketing in tough economic times, when leisure travelers are hard to come by and businesses slash budgets. Experts in four key areas of travel search marketing - Organic, Paid, Social and Local/Mobile - share successful strategies and creative campaign ideas to attract and increase traffic, proving that it is possible to generate positive ROI with limited resources. [click to continue…]
Last month, I wrote a quick post about the Rossignol Search & Win contest, which operates using Ask.com and Google sponsored search results. I’ll get to results for that in a sec. Today, the SESSIONS Search & Win program popped up on my radar. It’s pretty much the same design (as the Rossi program) and runs on the prodege.com / swagbucks platform: [click to continue…]
Ok, maybe not so much. But I do have an affinity for the place, since I spent a lot of time there back in college as a member of the UMass Ski n’ Board club (LAGNAF shout-out!) and as a ski journalist. Before I moved to the land with the Greatest Snow on Earth.
I wanted to give Mt. Snow a few more props (hey, they don’t get it often) to build on what I said about them in today’s SEW Article, 5 Tips for Travel Search Marketing in a Down Economy, with kudos to their creativity for a pretty solid Mount Snow YouTube channel. They’ve created a series of two ongoing shows - “Right Arm” and “Mount Snow Minute”. Check out this sample video:
I’d actually seen Mount Snow’s channel a couple months ago (before ski season started), and shared a video of my friends who raced at the 2008 mountain bike championships there, but hadn’t really taken the time to look around at what else they’d done. Another action sports marketing blog I’ve been checking out lately though, recently commented about why these viral videos work for Mount Snow.
Earlier today, I got to play Gossip Girl for a minute, when I published a series of posts on SEL, Search Engines Release Most Popular Search Trends of 2008, spotlighting the top trends in search queries on the major engines for the entire year. There’s also a few data points about online shopping and popular gifts this holiday season. I’ve always been pretty intrigued by “buzzology” and why certain topics go hot within online pop culture and the social media scene.
Near the end of every year, the SE’s release this data (I’m still waiting on Google Zeitgeist and Microsoft Live Search) typically with some analysis around the popular trends and in particular, searches for celebrity gossip. I think Yahoo! Buzz always does the best job at explaining why certain searches go popular, but I much prefer to speculate and create my own theories on occasion. [click to continue…]
This just landed in my inbox via a FWD email, so it qualifies as WOM. Given the nature of the contest, it’s the perfect thing to share here too.
Typically, those of us who love to work with action sports companies or old school manufacturers in the industry get frustrated when they don’t get the value of social media or SEO. So I’m always pleasantly surprised when I see new and cool ideas. Rossignol got it right this time, or at least came close..
How it Works:
Visit the special Rossignol search+Win site here, or sign up by clicking this banner:
The really cool part? The contest is essentially an affiliate play… I get points if you sign up and get points. They’ve smartly added “Invite a Friend” and Promote the Game banners for website use, social profiles, blogs & even included BBS code. You can download browser toolbars to make searching for points easier. [click to continue…]
I picked up the print version of the magazine today in a dr’s waiting area, noting the headline on the cover. In the list itself, there are probably few surprises, with TripAdvisor noted as best traveler review site, and a few better known brands like FareCast, Kayak/Sidestep, Open Table, LuxuryLink and Google Maps.
Mixed in are a few start-ups that are gaining traction, and perhaps more importantly, several niche sites for detailed itinerary booking, trip inspiration, and headache saving sites, among other unique mashups. Mentions of stalwarts like Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity are minimized in small blurbs about what’s new in these traditional booking engines. [click to continue…]
Recently, Google & LIFE magazine partnered together to create a Google Images hosted collection of over 2 million photographs, most of which have not previously been published (plus those famously published) in the periodical since the 1860’s.
You can search the entire LIFE collection for any topic by adding “source:life” to your query, and you can give a star rating to any image in the catalog.
A simple search for skiing images turned up these gems:
Vintage Ski Lift - That thing must move as slowly as the free cocktail line in an SEO conference exhibit hall!
So I’ve said here that I don’t do paid search, and I have yet to really dig into into social media based advertising, like Facebook’s platform (though I may meet with them next week at PubCon). Odds are, I won’t really get that much into socially based advertising (never say never), but from a strategic POV, I am definitely intrigued by the platform, and always looking for winners and losers in the game.
Today’s example just popped up when looking at my sister’s Facebook page - she’s based in VA. I am in Utah - so great - I was shown an ad very geo-targeted at me: [click to continue…]
